Abstract
The Buhari government has made war against corruption a fundamental component of its agenda for national rebirth. Since the administration was invested in May 2015, it has waged a relentless and persistent war on corrupt government functionaries of previous administration(s). This study was designed to examine the implications, the mechanisms, the contradictions, the dynamics and politics of Buhari's corruption war. This study investigated the socio-political dimensions of this war and the role(s) of national institutions. It adopted a descriptive design using a cultural construct, Molebi theory, to examine, analyse and interrogate the carnivalization of the trials of the suspects. This may not be a new phenomenon, but the energies and creativity that go into it these days showed a political trend that is capable of turning suspects' trials into a circus. The Molebi theory is used to identify and interpret the cultural creed which serves as a mantra of mobilization in support of politicians who are benefactors to their respective families and political associations. A nation that is lamenting a systemic dysfunction in its polity as a result of brazen and chronic prebendal and primitive accumulation should not in any circumstance raise an altar for the celebration of corruption by dancing to court in aso ebi in support of a rogue politician that is being tried for looting of the national treasury. The carnivalization of the trial of a rogue politician diminishes our values, insults our sensibilities, pollutes our cultural space, destroys the foundation of our polity and encourages communal scrambling for the endless gulping of our common wealth.
Highlights
Corruption is as ancient as the Nigerian state but not as endemic as it is in contemporary Nigeria
The corruption war and Buhari’s plan to create a new political order are being trivialized by proponents of corruption and their political households who have turned their trials to carnivals by dancing to court in Aso Ebi, all in a bid to create the impression that their benefactors are victims of political persecution
As long as the Buhari government remains in power and pursues its corruption war agenda with ruthless and determined precision, it will be difficult for the corrupt politicians to distract the government from establishing a new ethical order in Nigeria
Summary
The corruption war and Buhari’s plan to create a new political order are being trivialized by proponents of corruption and their political households who have turned their trials to carnivals by dancing to court in Aso Ebi, all in a bid to create the impression that their benefactors are victims of political persecution This statement of problem which takes its cues from a normative framework, is typical of most underdeveloped societies which desire to establish a new political order without sanitizing the Augean stables. Huntington argues that, contrary to modernization theory’s progressive assumptions, there was no reason to assume that political development was any more likely than political decay His position on this was amplified by Francis Fukuyama [2] who contends that: Political order emerges as a result of the achievement of some equilibrium among the contending forces within the society. After being invested into office, the Buhari administration, faced with several agenda options, decided to frontally confront corruption which it considered the dominant platform for the decay in the polity
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